Installation & Preparation

Before you can generate videos, you need to set up the Python package and several external dependencies.

1. Install the Python Package

The easiest way to install slidemovie is via pip. Open your terminal or command prompt and run:

pip install slidemovie

This will automatically install the necessary Python dependencies, including multiai-tts and pptxtoimages.

2. Install External Tools

slidemovie acts as a conductor for several powerful command-line tools. You must install these on your system for the program to work.

Required Tools

  1. FFmpeg: Used for processing audio and combining images and audio into a video file.
  2. Pandoc: Used to convert your Markdown text file into a PowerPoint (.pptx) file.
  3. LibreOffice: Used in “headless mode” to convert PowerPoint slides into high-resolution images.
  4. Poppler (pdftoppm): A PDF rendering library used to extract images from the slides.

Installation Commands

For macOS (using Homebrew)

If you do not have Homebrew installed, please visit brew.sh.

brew install ffmpeg pandoc poppler
brew install --cask libreoffice

For Ubuntu / Debian

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ffmpeg pandoc libreoffice poppler-utils

For Windows

  1. FFmpeg: Download from ffmpeg.org, extract it, and add the bin folder to your System PATH.
  2. Pandoc: Download the installer from pandoc.org.
  3. LibreOffice: Install the standard desktop version. Ensure the command line soffice is in your PATH.
  4. Poppler: Download binary release for Windows and add the bin folder to your PATH.

3. Setup AI API Keys

slidemovie uses the multiai-tts library to generate narration audio. You need to configure the model selection and the API keys.

1. Select the TTS Model

First, run the slidemovie command without any arguments:

slidemovie

Since no options are provided, this will result in an error. This is expected behavior. By running this command, a default configuration file is automatically created at:

~/.config/slidemovie/config.json

Next, please refer to the Configuration page. Edit the tts_provider, tts_model, and tts_voice settings in this file to select the Text-to-Speech model you wish to use.

2. Configure API Credentials

The configuration file handles model selection, but the API Key configuration follows the multiai settings.

Please refer to the official multiai documentation for detailed instructions on how to configure your API keys.

Note: Without a valid API key configuration matching your selected provider (Google Gemini or OpenAI), the audio generation step will fail.